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Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)

Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)

Overview

What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?

Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in…

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Recent Reviews

Decent but not great.

7 out of 10
August 23, 2014
Incentivized
Parature was used as a sole system of record for all our customer support cases, reviews, and feature requests. We used Parature to build …
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Parature - meh!

1 out of 10
August 06, 2014
Incentivized
I was using Parature when I was working at Blackboard Inc. The product was used as a CRM for our internal use and then was being used as a …
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Awards

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Pricing

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Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)

Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)

N/A
Unavailable

What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?

Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017. Former users are…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

Alternatives Pricing

Spiceworks Help Desk

Spiceworks Help Desk

N/A
Unavailable
What is Spiceworks Help Desk?

Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management. The Spiceworks Network Monitor provides information on observed IT for problem tracking and…

Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud

$25
per month
What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

Service Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

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Product Details

What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?

Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017. Former users are encouraged to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) Competitors

Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(13)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 06, 2014

Parature - meh!

Verified User
Account Manager in Professional Services
E-Learning Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I was using Parature when I was working at Blackboard Inc. The product was used as a CRM for our internal use and then was being used as a tracking/ ticketing system for our external clients. It was used only across Student Services and it addressed the problem of keeping track of of tickets and issues.
Pros and Cons
  • It has a lot of in depth features. They are almost to many of them.
  • The product is not user friendly at all. This needs to be worked out if Parature is going to make its mark on the industry.
  • The tickets system is sloppy at times and seems to have a mind of its own.
  • The custom version that was created for Blackboard was so up and down it was very frustrating
  • The back end of Parature is very complex
  • I believe with some major work the product could be great.
Likelihood to Recommend
Make the product more user friendly and stop trying to provide every feature. Just focus on what you are good at and not cram so many things into it.
Return on Investment
  • Tickets seemed to disappear in the data base.
  • The back end dynamics of the program as far as programming were so complex it was hard for our programmers to diagnose
  • There was no training offered and when you had to call in for support it took days or weeks to get a response.
Alternatives Considered
Salesforce is so much more intuitive and the layout is so much better. I never had any training nor did I need it with SF and with Parature it was a constant battle to understand its issues. I don't like to feel I have to resort to a manual every time I use the product.
Likelihood to Renew
1
It needs a lot of work and I feel that it is so unpolished and for a company like Blackboard you would think they would have spent more time investigating all possible scenarios.
Premium Support
Yes
We did but never saw a difference between normal support compared to premium.
Support Rating
1
Nothing ever seemed to get resolved.
Exceptional Examples of Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) Support
nope
Difficult Tasks
  • Every functions was a struggle
  • Custom reports were by far the most irritating
  • The usability was difficult to handle.
  • Logging in and that could be a struggle sometimes
  • There was no cross functionality to be able to switch from window to window
  • The reports were always hit or miss if things were going to time out or not
Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions
Yes, but I don't use it
Usability
1
Just try it for your self
August 01, 2014

Support software for people who don't need support software

Verified User
Engineer in Customer Service
Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We previously used Parature for all our customer-facing support needs. Tickets came in via email or our support portal and were created in Parature. Then, a support engineer would triage and assign those tickets depending on the complexity. Ticket-based support allowed us to support more customers in a far more efficient manner than via phone.
Pros and Cons
  • It's functional. It does what it needs to do without too many excess frills or features.
  • Uptime was generally good and we were usually notified of any planned outages.
  • Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
  • The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
  • Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
  • The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
  • It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you don't need robust do-it-yourself reporting and if you are running a customer service organization that only works one incident at a time, Parature might be a suitable solution for you. If you're a busy office handling multiple issues at a time and if you want real time information about team performance at your fingertips, there are likely better solutions that integrate with sales, marketing, and finance.
Return on Investment
  • Parature wasn't a very efficient use of time. It actually caused some slow performance due to the learning curve and inability to have more than one incident open at any given point in time.
Alternatives Considered
At the time, I believe we chose Parature because of pricing. That decision was made before my tenure with the company.
Likelihood to Renew
1
We left Parature for Salesforce Service Cloud. While Parature was functional, as our business matured we needed better support, more stability, and a lot more features. In addition, it integrated with our sales, marketing, and finance department, allowing us to all use a single solution and be able to share information across departments.
Easy Tasks
  • Login was simple to use
Difficult Tasks
  • Assigning tickets required multiple mouse clicks, as did closing tickets
  • Use of frames and sessions did not allow us to have multiple support tickets open at any time
  • It was very hard to get useful reporting data from this application
Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions
Yes
It was acceptable for looking at tickets, but I would never have wanted to use it to actually provide support to my customers on any frequent level.
Usability
3
It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.
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